Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Survival kit



There's a point in life when you cry when your toe is hurt because it hits the pebble. There's also a point in life when you cry because a pebble hits your toe. You forget when your toe hit the pebble, but you never forget the pebble which hit your toe. Why do you think  forgetting functions in such a strange discriminatory way?Why doesn't the mind forget all the hurts and all the burns like a flash flood that leaves no trace of itself except  a vacant land? You will say, the vacant land becomes the memory of the flash flood and hence it is impossible to forget it. You are right. The flash floods leave behind a vacant land, where once there was life and laughter, poverty and pain. And yet, do you think, those who survive such flash floods will die with remembrance of things past? Survival is like betel leaves. No matter how much you wished to secretively have them, the inadvertent red colour hang onto your lips and tongue.
You can not wash off life. But you can wash off despair. You can wash off the pains of being hurt by a flood of forgetting,not by denial, but by acceptance. You need not forget that the pebble hit the toe. Just shrug off the grudge. Because, that is not the last pebble that will hit your toe if you continue walking.

Original image from Scout Notebook-2001 http://www.ukonline.net/scoutnotes/
Modified by self

4 comments:

sup said...

"Survival is like betel leaves" :) I like the comparison and I also don't like it as it is followed by "You cannot wash off life" :) I mean the the issue of "washing of life / srvival" should not even arise. Its too negative to even to think of,

Again, we should not wash off pain by flood of fogetting and acceptance simply because there will be more pebble to hit us in future - but because burying pain and rise and trying to live happily is both our right and duty.

Susmita said...

i like what you said - "because burying pain and rise and trying to live happily is both our right and duty" :) thank you for sharing a different opinion :)

Athrunxala said...

I wish there was a survival kit for life that teaches us exactly what you said. Everyone should learn that you have to keep moving forward and not dwell on the past.

Susmita said...

@Athrunxala: isn't life one such magnanimous survival kit in itself? it has laughter, pain, peace, tears, grudge ... u name it, life has it ... why look for another one? let's just find the 'life':) wat say?